Daughter from Danang

Any documentary that keeps me glued to the set (I saw "Daughter from Danang" on PBS television) and can provoke compassion, delight, consternation, embarrassment, anger, admiration, and deep chagrin, is, to my mind, a great documentary.

"Daughter from Danang" fits that description. Regardless of my personal reaction to the players in this particular true-life drama, I will never see human relationships in quite the same way again. I'd challenge anybody to see it and come away indifferent.

A masterwork.

I just want to note that, from my view and contrary to what many of the previous posts suggest, Heidi's family did not see her as a dollar sign. The Vietnamese are very straightforward when it comes to money and family. I was most surprised at Heidi's reaction. Someone should have guided her and helped her understand before she met with her family. She should have done some research on the Vietnamese culture as should have her family with western culture. I enjoyed the movie as it portrays how vastly different our cultures are and how we can easily misunderstand each other.

I lived in Vietnam for about 9 months and have been asked for financial help just as Heidi was. I however didn't cry hysterically as I understood why I was being asked. Whenever friends or in-laws asked for money, I jokingly explained that I really could not afford it. Mind you, I was only asked by a few people.. I explained how life is far more expensive in the west and how a westerner could find such a question offensive. In turn they explained to me their reasoning. We didn't make any rash judgments and because of it, we left the incident more aware, experienced, and as friends.

Heidi needed guidance in understanding the difference in cultures because she was obviously not prepared to meet with her family. Based on what I gathered from the movie, growing up, Heidi seemed to have been closed off from the world. I feel that she needs guidance in life and not only in Vietnam. I don't mean to judge her as I could be wrong; I only know what the documentary offered.

I particularly liked John Petrakis's Tribune review where he writes in bold print: "not recommended for young children." There is no blood, no violence, no profanity, but this rating is due to the high emotional content. You have to search through your vocabulary for superlatives here, featured throughout are extraordinary glimpses of faces framed in their own natural environment, the underlying original music is superb and perfectly balanced, there is a wonderful golden-orange sunrise on a quiet riverbank following her first night in Vietnam where the camera finds a dragonfly resting atop the highest leaf, when her Vietnamese childhood memories return they appear to be almost sketched onto a canvas in an impressionistic blur, all beautifully layered together.

This film begins in 1975 as the Vietnam War was ending with Operation Babylift, (an event which, on it's own, is worthy of it's own documentary, particularly the newsreel footage seen here of an American social worker attempting to convince Vietnamese women to send their children to the USA under the guise of an airlift for war orphans), when a 7 year old Amerasian girl is separated from her family and sent to the USA for adoption, supposedly for her betterment, and she becomes `101% Americanized.' Yet in her 20's, when she yearns to meet her real mother, she discovers her mother feels the same way about missing her, so after 22 years of separation, she travels back to Vietnam in what turns out to be one incredible re-unification, beautifully capturing unanticipated depths of an experience that even the filmmakers could never have imagined. Both the mother and daughter are immensely appealing and couldn't express more genuine affection, but both are overwhelmed and completely flabbergasted by the personal and historical abyss that exists between them, leaving them both reeling, as if stepping on a land mine, from the unseen, misunderstood emotional scars left behind from the aftermath of the war. What starts out as a well-meaning attempt to wipe away bad childhood memories only ends up compounded with still more complicated, bad adult memories. One irony here is that her Vietnamese name means `united.' Sometimes in a documentary, the most difficult decision is to let the cameras continue to roll when you know you are intruding into the personal regions of someone's private anguish. But here, it is the best part of the film – a heart-wrenching, emotional jolt for the whole world to see that is simply unforgettable. What this film has to say about love, that it is so much more than just saying words, that sometimes you are called upon to demonstrate your love with deeds, is indescribable.

There may be an inclination to consider the girl too naive and spoiled and to disregard her out of hand. But I would urge people to reconsider this view, as she was unexplainably (to her) separated from her own family, raised instead by a single mother who eventually had no use for her at all, was also raised in one of the more racially intolerant communities in America, which might explain why she was so unprepared emotionally to handle something as simple as affection, a family notion completely alien to her, and which she found, at the time, completely suffocating. ("Get away from me!") Is it any wonder that she might prefer the more emotionally distant relationship with her adopted American family, as that's all she really knows? It should also be viewed in another perspective, as the translator reminded her, that the family pressure and the cultural differences would diminish the longer she stayed. Contrarily, by shortening her visit, which she herself chose, she put even more pressure on herself and her Vietnamese family to finalize what was missing for 22 years into one final day - a sheer impossibility. From a Vietnamese perspective, they were simply trying to include her, permanently, as a member of the family, not just in words, but in deeds.

But what I found so compelling in this girl, who was born in Vietnam, was that she really had no more sensitivity or understanding of Vietnam than the US government, namely none, which certainly demonstrates how easily we can learn to drop bombs on one another, and how inadvertently, by being so Americanized, besides living in material comfort, she was also taught the arrogance and narrow-mindedness of our American values when it comes to understanding the importance or significance of cultures from other nations. What have we learned since Vietnam? Look at our Government in action today, and the contempt we show to other nations unless they agree with us in lock step. What I found so compelling about this girl is how she represents, through no fault of her own, a new image of the ugly American, that looks different but thinks so much like the old image, how little progress we've made on that front, and how far we have to go.

I watched this movie by accident. I was reading a material and had left the TV on when the title came up ..... " Daughter From Danang" .... I did not know what it was, but my instinct told me it was a drama movie/documentary film. I am all for dramas and more so with true to life story documentaries. Without hesitance, I dropped what I was reading and soon became engrossed as the story was unfolding. True, I was expecting a happy ending. Instead, the movie ended in a sad tone with a subtle hint of possibly another tragedy in the making. I was deeply saddened and felt the pang of pain for Heidi that her visit turned out like a nightmare. I myself is a mixture of Chinese and of Southeast Asian background (not Vietnamese). Most of my relatives from both sides of my parents are very poor. They hardly have any food on the table, let alone a decent house or education. I grew up seeing my parents helped their relatives in every way they can in terms of food, shelter, clothes, education and employment. A lot of times, we the children had to sacrifice our wants and likes such as fun outfits, nice toys and holiday trips because my parents could no longer afford those. With all gratitude, my parents provided all of us seven (7) children, the education that was inexistent in our family tree. Helping family and relatives is like a tradition in my family. It is also like a legacy and it will be passed on to the next generation, especially to the ones who are in a position to help. Growing up in this type of environment .... I totally understand and sympathize with the Vietnamese's predicament and the need for help. I am almost sure that when they knew Heidi was coming to see them, they probably thought she will bring them the much needed salvation. The Vietnamese Family may have expected this to happen, more than just hoped for it to happen. This was demonstrated by their aggressiveness in asking for financial help, of which Heidi took it as rude and offensive. Heidi's reaction was also understandable because she was brought up by her adoptive parent the "Americn Way". Very strong minded and independent, amongst many other qualities. I am just curious as to why Heidi was not prepared for all of this? I am aware that the lady who escorted her to Vietnam have told her that life is very different there. But somehow, Heidi should have gone a little further or at least, she should have been encouraged by the filming group to do a little research on the cultural background of her estranged family. Her awareness and familiarization of the social culture could have helped her interact with her family in a more positive way, and may have avoided the unnecessary feeling of shock, anger and resentment that caused her so much anguish, it broke my heart. It's been 2 years now since her emotional visit to Vietnam. She may have taken some time to think things over and have created a plan to reconsider her brother's plea for help. At the end of the interview, Heidi said something to this effect: "I guess I closed the door on them (paused and thinking). Yes, I may have closed the door, but I did not lock the door (gave a smile"): This gave me a strong sense of hope. It tells me that she's taking a step back in order to make two steps forward. Heidi's American upbringing ..... the morals, virtues and principles that she was shaped into by her adoptive family may play a big role in her recognizing and exercising humanitarian gestures towards her Vietnamese family. I hope that this act of good deed will serve as a vehicle for her to learn to accept her real family and to love them unconditionally, as they did for her. According to Heidi, she lives for the present and for the future. The she does not live for the past....... my comment to this is that for Heidi to accept and acknowledge the fact that there was a huge void in her life that needs filling up. In my opinion, she needs to find a way to connect the past to the present, so that she may able to proceed with her journey to the future. I think, if she's able to do this, she would feel whole, strong and liberated. This is then a call for PART TWO of the drama ...... ah! what should be the title? HHHmmm, I'll leave that to you. This movie has been inspiring to me, and no doubt .... should be inspiring for those children like Heidi. This presentation, could help thousands of those children ease their silent suffering, and may help aide them in their healing process. That ultimately, the tragedy in Vietnam War will yield a happy ending. At least, for those innocent children like Heidi who will successfully come to terms with her past, present and future life as a person. To the people who created this film, thank you and more power to you. To Heidi and her family .... be patient for "LOVE WILL CONQUER ALL".

It's almost 2008 and Heidi's mother still waits. Heidi may never understand the complicated reasons for the failure of her visit, as expressed so well in various commentaries. She was told her family would expect help, and perhaps if Tran T Nhu (who paid for and planned the trip to visit relatives in Hanoi before Heidi and the film crew asked to come along) had been able to stay with Heidi, there might not have been the breakdown. It certainly wasn't planned. The film followed the unfolding events with honesty. It remains a small slice of the multiple effects and ongoing trauma of war. Maybe Heidi's children will some day want to visit their Viet Nam family, but they too will have to face the cultural divide. With the right background, which Heidi unfortunately lacked, visiting one's Asian relatives becomes a wonderful and enriching experience.